Jane Fonda on Megyn Kelly bringing up plastic surgery: the wrong time and place
Jane Fonda and Robert Redford are promoting their new Netflix film Our Souls at Night, directed by Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox). It’s a rare film about two elderly people finding love, based on the novel of the same name, and is getting solid reviews. Critics are primarily praising Fonda and Redford’s performances, which is no surprise as they’re both Oscar winners who have worked on screen for over fifty years. They’ve also played lovers three times before, in The Chase (1966), Barefoot in the Park (1967) and The Electric Horseman (1979).
So interviewers should have all sorts of material to draw from on the rare occasion that they get the honor of interviewing these two together. Only on Megyn Kelly’s new Today show segment she made the grave error of singling out Fonda and asking her about her plastic surgery. Fonda has been open about the work she’s had done, but asking such a personal question in front of a costar and live studio audience was a massive faux pas. Jane shut that down quickly, as we reported yesterday, and she made it clear with her facial expressions and deft change of subject that it was not appropriate. In a new interview with ET Canada, Jane was asked about that moment and she said it was not the time or place for that question.
Where you shocked by Megyn’s question?
Fonda: A little bit I mean given the fact that we don’t have a lot of time and Bob was right here and it was a weird thing to bring up, whether I’ve had plastic surgery or not. I have and I’ve talked about it but it just seemed like the wrong time and place to raise that question.
Redford (in a separate interview) Of course that didn’t involve me because I haven’t had it [plastic surgery]. So what happened? Jane just pushed it away didn’t she? I think she didn’t want to go there. I think she didn’t want to have the show turn into about her surgery or her look it was about the quality of her performance. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.
Jane is telling it like it is, and that’s pretty much what I wrote about this too – that’s a question for a magazine interview or a one-on-one tell-all interview that will later be edited, it’s not something you would ask a celebrity in front of a live audience. It’s like Kelly is learning on the job instead of doing necessary prep work. These are really glaring mistakes she’s making and she just insulted a legend. As for Redford claiming he hasn’t had plastic surgery, I have a hard time believing that. His neck looks too good to me and he’s 81. My mom has friends who look like they’ve had work done without actually having had anything (so they claim) so it’s possible I guess.
Also, do you remember how Kelly made terrible gay “jokes” while she was interviewing the cast from Will and Grace? She joked that the show turned a superfan gay. Well Debra Messing made a curt and to-the-point comment on Instagram about that. She wrote, in part “Regret going on. Dismayed by her comments.” According to Page Six, NBC, which runs both The Today Show and Will and Grace, has disciplined Messing for those comments and told her to stop. A source told them “Debra was told to cut it out by someone high up in the NBC Entertainment division run by Bob Greenblatt, via her agent or publicist.”
I hope execs at NBC also told Kelly not to make stupid homophobic jokes and to be more professional, but I doubt they did that. They hired her after all. This is the age when public figures say bigoted things and when the people who call them out get disciplined for it. Kelly isn’t the worst example, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be held accountable for the stupid sh-t she says.
Photos are from the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. Credit: WENN, Backgrid and screenshot from ET Canada
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